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Robert Winokur

Robert Winokur

Robert Winokur

Born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Robert Winokur is a ceramic artist based in Horsham, Pennsylvania. Winokur became interested in ceramics in an art class recommended to him by a guidance counselor hoping to improve his grades. He chose to continue his studies of the material at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, earning his BFA in 1956. He also completed a MFA from Alfred University in 1958. While at school, Winokur met his future wife Paula, who was also at Tyler in the ceramics department. Paula and Robert were married in 1958 and have maintained a shared ceramics studio for over 50 years. The couple spent several years producing functional ceramic wares to make a living until Robert was invited to join the faculty at Tyler School of Art in 1975 – upon the recommendation of his mentor, ACC Gold Medalist Rudolf Staffel. He served as a professor of ceramics until his retirement in 2005 as professor emeritus and acted as department chair from 1988 – 1991. Though Winokur’s art practice has varied over the years, stylized house forms have been a recurrent subject. Interested in a house’s physical and metaphorical relationship to a container or vessel, Winokur often finds his formal inspiration in children’s drawings of his preferred subject. His sculptures have been exhibited around the country and are represented within the collections of institutions including the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in Texas. He was selected for an oral history interview by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in 2011 and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979. Robert Winokur was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2002.